Trump Shares New Butler Details After Scathing Security Report

WASHINGTON — Two years after a would-be assassin attempted to kill Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, the president reflected on the security failures that almost ended his life.

“Well, they blew Butler, because they had one building that was empty, and they blew it,” he said as he spoke to Fox & Friends on Monday morning. Monday marks the second year since July 13, 2024, when 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks fired at Trump. Crooks fired eight rounds, narrowly missing Trump’s head and grazing him in the ear, but his shots killed attendee Corey Comperatore and critically injured two others.

An inspector general report released in late June found that Secret Service agents failed to receive most of the 102 radio transmissions from local authorities ahead of the assassination attempt, which caused them to miss multiple opportunities to stop Crooks. The report also found that the Secret Service was severely understaffed in 2023 and 2024 and that the agency’s culture of using personal devices and unsecured government phones left some locations and data open to attacks.

Trump typically does not criticize the Secret Service, who he has praised for saving him that day, but his Monday remarks acknowledged that the Secret Service should have stopped Crooks before he was able to open fire.

“Now at the same time — David, our sniper from 300 yards, was able to act within less than four seconds and took out somebody that he didn’t know existed, which was unbelievable, the job he did — because if he didn’t do that, you would have had a lot of people,” the president added, implying that many more people would have been killed had the sniper not taken out Crooks.

“Maybe not me, because they were on top of me pretty quickly — I had a lot of people on top of me, and they were very brave,” Trump explained. “The Secret Service was very brave. They were on top of me very, very fast. They saw what was happening. Everybody saw very quickly. I knew — I knew exactly what was happening.”

Trump reflected on that moment, describing how in tune he was with what was happening amidst the chaos.

“It was amazing how I understood exactly,” he noted. The president said he instantly knew it was his ear that was bleeding, though the people around him thought he had been hit “all over,” but he pointed out that the ear bleeds more than many other parts of the body.

“It has to do with cartilage,” he noted. “It was a bloody mess. But I knew I only got hit there, and they thought I got hit in many different locations because of the blood.”

Photo by Rebecca DROKE / AFP via Getty Images

The FBI said in November 2025 that it has conducted over a thousand interviews and is “very confident” in the assessment that Crooks acted alone when he tried to kill Trump.

“It is the FBI’s conclusion that Crooks acted alone,” former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Fox News at the time, pushing back on online conspiracies about Crooks. He shared that the FBI gained access to all “35 accounts linked to Crooks, including social media, bank, and other online accounts.”

“Dan and I have been on this since we got here eight months ago,” FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox at the time. “We fully briefed the president, as a victim of this case, at the White House, providing him with all of the details of our investigation, and the president was satisfied with the results and where we left it.”

“We are very confident in the outcomes of this investigation,” Bongino added. “We have pulled on every threat. We are absolutely confident, and if information surfaces, please, immediately get it over to us for instant action.”

Crooks’ attack was one of four known assassination attempts the president has faced. Ryan Wesley Routh is serving a life sentence in prison for attempting to shoot Trump on September 15, 2024, and Austin Tucker Martin was shot and killed by authorities as he attempted to breach Mar-a-Lago in February 2026.

On April 25, a shooter named Cole Tomas Allen attempted to charge into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and open fire on multiple top Trump administration officials, including the president, according to federal prosecutors.

A Secret Service official assured The Daily Wire in late June that the agency is well prepared for his return.

“At every protective site, the U.S. Secret Service deploys a sophisticated, layered security framework that is custom-designed and continuously evolves to meet today’s heightened security environment,” the official said.

“While the existing security plan at the April 2026 White House Correspondents’ Dinner was effective in interdicting an identified threat, the agency continually reviews our security posture and will make adjustments, as necessary.”